Friday, August 9, 2013

Excerpt 4 from STATE FAIR by Phil Stong

There was one man in the car, a young man, who wearily waved a small card at the loader. Margy caught a glimpse of the card and recognized a miniature reproduction of a logotype she saw every day, the masthead of the Des Moines Evening Tribune. With awe she realized that she was about to occupy a car with the Press.

The Press was a young man of twenty-seven or eight, with sleepy eyes, a  pleasant, not unattractive face, and a faint smile. His suit, of light gray tweed, set off a well-browned face and picked up hair of platinum blond for which any chorus-girl would have given her soul a dozen times over. He had evidently been around the world hundreds of times, had tired of wine, women, and song, and had taken up roller-coastering as an End in Life.

Margy took a seat demurely in the place to which the attendance beckoned her, at the young man's side. The bar was dropped over their laps and the car started, slowly.

Before they had gone twenty feet, Margy realized that she was not riding on the roller-coaster of the previous year. The first climb was tremendous, was mountainous. She felt a faint alarm. The young man lay back, relaxed, inspecting the Fair Grounds from the increasingly advantageous heights. He took out a cigarette, looked at it critically, and put it back in his pocket. Margy smiled and nodded at the cigarette. He thanked her with a glance, but shook his head.

The next moment they fell ninety feet.


State Fair, by Phil Stong



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